There is a deep-seated contradiction within me. I have a life-long aversion to gambling and yet with my most precious resources I am a high-sakes gambler.
You’ll never catch me inside a casino. I despise every aspect of the gambling industry and I consider gambling a public nuisance and a sinful distrust of God’s providence. (Did I state that strongly enough?)
Still, I am a gambler with my most cherished assets. Young parents don’t realize it yet, but parents whose children are teenagers or older know that parenting is a high-stakes gamble. We do our best: we pray, guide, listen, love, demand and forgive, and in the end, release. Children are more valuable to parents than anything else, and yet the twenty-year project has no guarantees.
However, Christian parents have a lot going for them: biblical guidance, the support of a Christian community and the promise of God’s covenant faithfulness. God hears our prayers, God blesses, God acts. In raising our kids Becky and I engaged in a good gamble.
I also gamble with my money, but not foolishly as with slot machines or lottery tickets. For all of our thirty-five years Becky and I have invested ten per cent of our income in Christian endeavors. Every year the vast majority of that tithe goes back to our church. We also invest in mission agencies, denominational renewal groups and my seminary.
Once the check is written I have lost control of my asset. I consider it a good gamble. My money is given with love for God and faith that God will multiply my gift beyond all expectation. Gambling with my tithe – getting it out of my bank account and into God’s hand’s – is what is known as a sure bet.
I’m also a gambler with my most valuable resource of all, my time. I am betting that pouring my life into the renewal and reformation of the church is a good use of my years. I have been a Presbyterian pastor for 31 years and over half that time has been invested in Faith Church.
Has the gamble paid off? It depends on what we measure. When I apply certain measurements I tend to be discouraged, and when I use other measurements I am encouraged to no end.
In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25), Jesus describes three servants who are given ten, five and one measures of money to invest. The two who gambled with the master’s money were commended for their faith as well as their results. The one who exhibited no faith and who failed to invest what was given was strongly condemned.
As the crisis of faith in the Mainline churches, including the PC(USA) increases, those of us who are called by God to a ministry of church renewal need to show less caution and more faith, accompanied by confident, ongoing, impassioned prayer. Having been disheartened by previous setbacks in renewal efforts, the temptation is to scale back our expectation for what is possible in the days ahead.
But there is no faith expended in lowering our expectations. Ironically, the faithful few are in danger of losing faith. It is when times are difficult that we need to examine the degree to which we are going out on a limb to complete our mission. If what we are doing is completely ordinary and eminently achievable, then we are vulnerable to the same denunciation given to the servant in Jesus’ parable, who hid his money in the ground.
“What are you attempting that can only be achieved if God supports and sustains it?” That classic question is a good measure of the degree of faith we are exhibiting in carrying out God’s work. To live by faith is, quite simply to gamble on the outcome. Always to play it safe, on the other hand, is the opposite: no faith. With faith in Christ we can have confidence to gamble with our limited resources by placing them in God’s hands.
Sure, we need to be wise, and we need to be good stewards of what God has given. But I would say that in this uncertain time God’s call is for us to accept new challenges and greater risk. Are we ready to live by faith? Am I?
Pray. . . invest. . . trust: that’s a good formula for a faith-saturated life. I’m going to take the gamble.
Rick
